Organizational communications must be made with intent, and with a focus on the purpose of your communications at the forefront. The days of communicating haphazardly and reactively based on a recent occurrence or upcoming event should be long gone. More than ever, organizations have come to understand the power and influence of a robust communications platform and its ability to reduce risk and enhance your brand and performance at the highest level. These three key purposes serve as the foundation for the success of leadership teams who desire a decisive edge in today’s competitive market.
To shape the culture of the organization
Internally, your communications apparatus should be designed to shape an organization’s culture by translating and distilling your policies and procedures, which govern how people should behave and interact with each other and your customers. In an earlier article for CEP, “Three key purposes of all policies and procedures,” we discussed the PIERCE™ Model’s equation for how shaping the culture of an organization is one of the purposes for all policy.[1] Lo and behold, the PIERCE Model also offers identical purposes for communication. From an executive leadership standpoint, this is a purposefully matrixed overlay to align culture and methodologies throughout an organization’s portfolio. As a result, when these identical concepts in different disciplines are properly aligned and then simultaneously leveraged in harmony, organizations will start seeing dynamic organizational effectiveness that can transcend performance objectives in every way.
From an external standpoint, your communications apparatus should ideally highlight the culture that actually exists in your organization. Or it may depict a delusion of what the organization thinks it is but may not be. Either way, that translates into your brand. For the record, your brand isn’t what you say it is; it’s what people think it is.
